So I've been reading about this Zeitgeist movement -- which is mostly a bunch of idealistic, touchy-feely hippies who think that society can be run from the top down by abolishing money and government and having computers run everything based on instruments measuring the earth's remaining resources and running robots that manufacture all the goods.
They don't realize that any social order governing the use of resources and distribution of goods must work from the bottom up, or else it can't be resilient and reliable. That's why money is so popular and capitalism works so well -- real money doesn't need to be managed or centralized to work, there just has to be enough of it to be fluid.
Not to mention all their arguments only apply against fiat money, not real money. Sure, fiat money fails because it doesn't have the decentralized, unmanaged property of real money, makes those who get the newly printed money first wealthier while making everyone else poorer, and causes continuous inflation which encourages people to take on debt instead of save, but that's no reason to abandon money altogether.
They also think that technological automation means capitalism will fall apart due to mass unemployment, but they don't stop to consider more practical alternatives like someday drastically reducing the length of the full-time work week to 2 or 3 days a week and increasing vacation time. Or if it ever gets to the point where there's just no work needed to be done by the majority of people, providing a basic monthly stipend to everyone, so those jobs that do exist still have incentives in terms of being able to find more wealth.
About the only good thing they're really proposing is an end to short-sighted consumerism and overuse or destruction of resources and more emphasis on long-term planning and sustainable resource usage, but they just don't realize that you have to do it by setting up the system so that there's natural incentives and disincentives governing what people do rather than simply telling society what the right thing to do is.
Otherwise, the system is too centralized and fragile. Some ambitious jackass who doesn't do what they're told can use resources to the detriment of everyone else, or a sun storm can knock out the world's central planning computer causing all the robots to not know how much stuff to make, and you get chaos.
Or worse, the instruments used by the computer turn out to be giving bad readings, and so the robots over-produce stuff and suddenly we've run out of gasoline or copper 50 years too soon.
It's frustrating because people actually buy into their ideals without stopping to deeply consider just how complex systems like societies work or to consider alternative ideas of how to change our society to be more functional.
Ah! You know, just the other week a bunch of my friends were hanging out, and one of us was very much in line with the whole Zeitgeist theory of things, and the others of us were attempting to point out the philosophical and social problems that would be inherent in it.
For example, people will always use things to take power over others. It's not just in the use of money. Whoever has set up the computer systems, etc. will always have an edge, and as long as there's even the most subtle difference between people, it will be exploited to the advantage of one over and against another. That's nature. Not just human nature, but nature as a whole. Nature is not something peaceful and in proper accord and tune and all that crap, but it works because the various conflicting systems stand at a perfect stalemate of power. The same works between people.
Anyway, my main objection to things like this is the over-dependancy on technology. I think we should be careful of putting ourselves into such a circumstance more than we already are. Or, at any rate, we should be wary of doing it too quickly. We can't let our technology so overcome us that we become utterly dependant on it for our absolute survival.
Actually, I think essentially the main problem with this and every other altruistic system that has been proposed it nicely summed up in your statement of 'an ambitious jackass.' Not to mention something else... this is an ideal of an entirely planned society... and though I am not really at all versed in science fiction writing, I am dead certain the pitfalls of such a society have been examined a hundred and a thousand times. It is an interesting thought, but I don't think it has much realistic potential.
Then again, the most of Zeitgeist is out to lunch as it is. Anyone watch the first part of those videos? Anyone with a low-level knowledge of myth and mythological theory would laugh at their naive and logically incoherent assumptions. From stating things that are outright false in regards to ancient myths (ie. Dionysus as a virgin birth, a claim that is simply false), to claims that make use of mythological theories that are outdated by a century (ie. attribution of mythic origins to solar/natural phenomenae alone is a theory that holds very little water anymore, at least in mainstream scholarly community.) I know there are those who consider the things proposed on them somehow earthshattering or some sort of disproving of religion, but it's nothing of the sort. If one truly wanted to make an intelligent comparison, such as might be found in modern scholarship, you could, for example, cite the similiarities between the life, death, and aftermath of Sokrates to the story of Jesus as told in the Bible. I think a strong argument can be made for a typological similarity. There are such arguments that are, if not entirely sound, at least interesting and plausable. But to anyone who has invested any time in studying the fields of antiquity, of old literature and archaeology and all that surrounds it, can at once spot how fallacious and essentially childlike the arguments are, not only on a factual basis, but also on a methodological one.
As such, it already puts their understanding and ability to reason into doubt. It's little wonder that their discussions on social problems would be frought with error and the like.
My gripe, therefore? The people who set forward and then those who believe pseudo-science, pseudo-history, pseudo-myth, and all the other pseudos, rejecting the standards of those fields with fringe theories based on ignorance. There is a very real reason we have peer review and experts in fields and, like it or not, most of the time those people are experts for a reason. It's the rarest circumstance where an outside party can bring something new to the table intelligently (ie. Michael Ventris and his decipherment of Linear B), and in that case it generally takes far more than a theory with a few specious tidbits that one's attempted to mould into proof. The logic that stands behind pseudo-whatever is generally based on a distrust of 'the man' (whilst still citing several 'authorities' in the system, to appear legitimate), generally propogated by one or a few individuals, and takes the very un-scientific method of setting forward a pet theory on little to no initial evidence and finding everything one can to support it whilst twisting or denying everything that doesn't. So, because pyramids exist in both Meso America and in Egypt, we have Egyptian colonists sail to America (because there's NO way those new world primitives could build things like THAT on their own, right?) or, better yet, aliens did it because people then, well, we weren't as smart as these days, so we couldn't have done it. *sigh* Please, for the love of all that is at least partially true, run from such theories. Question standard theorems if you wish, but question their premises with intelligent dialogue! Don't just make sweeping statements based on bloody esoteric knowledge claims! Because I'll tell you what... Zeitgeist and its ilk... is to the modern system of knowledge what the Mystery Religions were to the people of old: claims to arcane knowledge. That's always got an appeal to the human spirit, no matter what. But it's almost never founded on anything sure.
